Monday, 25 January 2016

Saturday past David and myself decided to get together and give our troops a run out. It has been a good while since my last game so we decided to drop cavalry for the day to help towards a smoother game without troops being pinned in square around the board.

So we set up with the French defending a Saxon town with the idea of the Prussians trying to capture the town and or pin the French in place with Prussian reserves on the way to the battle and pretty much the same for the French with reserves to come on later if the town was taken or a number of brigades were destroyed.

The main thoughts on getting a game in as well as getting our wargaming started for the year is to see how our collections are coming along. David has completed another battalion of French (seen here behind the Swiss in red) so with his progress on Poles, Brits and Austrians his 18mm collection is really starting to take shape.

For the game we decided to try and use skirmishers (and for me also grande bande) to see what effect they were in the game. I had a lot of luck with my jager and David's voltigeurs whittled away at my advancing troops throughout the game.

A Prussian brigade advancing on 1 of my newly finished Saxon villages: I'd like to say I enjoyed doing the terrain however throughout my little adventure I kept on thinking that I should be painting figures! I had a chat with a fellow gamer VK a few months back and it was nice to know I'm not entirely alone in my chain of thought!

David checking out our interpretation of a rule: It's inevitable when you haven't played a ruleset in a number of months that there are areas you forget (add to that David and I both had the makings of manflu) but we still managed to work our way through the game fine. I remember a number of years ago we were managing to get a game of GdB in every couple of weeks and I would say we were getting pretty good at it (Jamie you will dispute this no doubt, however at the time you were still flying your full thrust ships about so you couldn't possibly know ;-) However if I'm lucky I could get a game in every 2-3 months so the chance of learning and progressing are pretty poor. We worked out I have 9 opportunities to game during a year due to my poor work rota, we have made plans to work something out using public holidays and the odd annual leave. Sooooo this year I would like to get more from the gaming side of the hobby, only time will tell . . .

One positive thing, with my little terrain effort, although it isn't spectacular our battlefield does for our purpose look a lot more attractive. I will add to this over time hopefully bridges, river and probably another village as the Katzbach OOB that I try to follow when I can has 3 in it. Obviously I would like to add terrain for other areas Borodino, Russian villages and perhaps some tiger terrain for Wavre, Ligny etc.

Also this past few months, and I think in particular while doing my Saxons for some reason I have been getting wee flash backs and feelings from when I was a kid collecting and painting my Napoleonic toy soldiers (mostly Esci/Italieri for me as Airfix, all though we had loads were from my brother Davids generation). They have been a very pleasant experience of a time when I knew only Waterloo and of that not very much, however it was an excellent time when painting up a battalion with humbrol enamels without any shading left me with a huge sense of achievement. I have no idea why it is just recently they have begun, however they are very welcome!

The battle: well in the end the Prussians took the town and both armies would be getting reinforcements, the Landwehr were taking a bit of a drubbing yet so were the French. It was just nice to throw the dice about again and see our collections out on the table!

When you play you always spot things you are lacking, terrain wise I need more trees (now underway), as well as the items I mentioned above. Prussians I need limbers which I have (unpainted) however I have Saxon plans for them plus jager, I recon I will need to paint up 12 more to have enough for any game I field and again I have them unpainted. I would also like to do another jager battalion using the newer AB Prussian.

The main things I need for home wargaming are French and their allies. I can't expect to hold onto the Davids troops so I have taken steps to put a French army together. Hopefully i'll be able to add to them with Wurtemburgers (and as you may know I'm working on Saxons at the moment). I also would like to get back to Bavarians. So my plan for the year are Saxons with a sprinkling of Prussians and Russians and the French plus allies from other sources hopefully.

Anyway we had a fun game and planned to play on till 9-10pm however after an Indian meal we kinda slowed down and ended up talking figures etc.

This is pretty much where we stopped. With the soon to be released GdB scenario book for Imperial sunset covering 1813-14 we are hoping there will be plenty forus us to build towards!

Another of David's newly finished battalions. I think along with his AB Swiss and Croatians he has 2 legere and 2 line finished. if you've followed my blog for a while you will know that my nephew and brother already have a sizeable French army however young David is now working towards his own part of the collection now.

Also thanks to Pancake for his teddy fur idea, it does add to the terrain and is easy to get hold of.

Well a bit of a waffle today, I hope I did bore the pants off everyone.

Monday, 11 January 2016

Hello, its been a long while since I put up a post and I'm really sorry about that, I had intended to do a few around Christmas and New Year but everything caught up with me. I was rota'd on Christmas, Boxing day, Hogmanay and New Years day plus some other stuff that life throws at use all as we get older so I tried my best to fit in a bit of festive fun for myself with my family and friends around the holiday time so although I continued to make the odd video, setting out a blog post took a little to much time to plan.

I wish everyone a belated Happy New Year to everyone for 2016 lets hope it will be a good 1!!!

On other news I'm back to using a Laptop for doing my blog combined with Mai's old pink Samsung camera for pics so we will see how that goes. Mai has repossessed the Ipad! Anyway when I finally got a break after New Year I decided it was about time I did some terrain for Saxony 1813 and I'm very happy how they have come out.Sorry the post is a little picture heavy!

My Leib hussars smashing their way through a Saxon town:My Prussian light cavalry were involved in a very sad dropped box incident, you will see a couple of the horses noses were scratched but not half as bad as my lancers and Landwehr cavalry! I'll get them sorted out though!

So this is the 1st piece of terrain in full: My brother David passed me some hard board around 3-4mm deep and I cut it to size, the buildings are from Faller (the large buiding) and 2 resin buildings that I picked up at Claymore a couple of years back (the resin is light which is a handy thing for the wargames table).

Napoleon coordinating the defence of the village:The fields are young David's. I made some fields from offcuts of the card and will show them later as I have another village and farm on the go.

Blucher and his heroic Landwehr taking the village from the evil French invaders.

My Saxon troops trying to influence the future of their nation: After supergluing the buildings in place I used different grades of sand to make the roads and grass areas then painted them earth brown and highlighted with light shades of earth and sand.

My proud Saxons after liberating their town: I used a couple of different shades of grass, and silfour turfs I got from Kenny Thomson from the Falkirk club. I also added little runners up the walls. These were a great find, they were knocked down to clear and I should have bought more as they look excellent when added in.

My 2nd terrain piece finished is an old church I picked up off ebay: I had already given it a rough paint job for our Plancenoit battle but I wanted a more subtle finish for our long term use. Young David's OG young guard trying to clear out my Prussians.

The outer wall was also picked up from ebay, 1st item on the list with a "15mm Wall" search on ebay and its a cracker, I have loads left over and you can break bits off to create rubble. So I have 2 more terrain pieces almost done however I am painting a Saxon grenadier battalion at the moment. Really excited about doing my Saxons again!

So that's it for now, I am looking forward to blogging more this year and sorry for not getting around everyones blogs. Now that I am comfortable with the Laptop I should be able to contribute to our community more, Also I plan to take part in a few games this year and have a few in the loft with my nephew David. So again all the best to everyone and Happy Wargaming!!!

HELLO AND WELCOME

Like most figure painters and wargamers I have a large stash of unpainted lead hidden around my house and the way I see it I maybe have 15 to 20 good years of painting left in me. My goal is to get 1/2 of this mountain finished. My blogs will be a record of my efforts.